


All things return at night

by afearfulbride



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, brief but graphic description of wartime violence, brief non-sexual choking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 18:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afearfulbride/pseuds/afearfulbride
Summary: Sharing a bed with an omnic lover has its downfalls- particularly when the ghosts of the Omnic Crisis still wake you in a cold sweat at night, or worse. Zenyatta is not deterred.





	All things return at night

Cold steel on his cheek ripped Jack from the belly of sleep and into darkness.

\- no, not darkness, not perfectly, not with that piercing glow above him like six, ten, a _dozen_ cold eyes staring down at him with unrelenting omniscience, like spots on a cobra’s hood above him, perfectly still before that perfect strike- calculated to within fractions of fractions of proximity, _a machine never misses_ , _either you shoot or they blow out your brains and shatter your bones and melt your eyes in their sockets._

But his body was a weapon and it recoiled around him in a heartbeat, lungs exploding with oxygen, all blind, churning muscle until he was upright and the omnic had hit the ground with a deafening clatter (maybe it was in his head, that storm of metal on metal.) It wasn’t the first tin-can he’d wrestled for his life, wouldn’t be the last, if he closed his hands around the delicate column of back-strut that made a mockery of a throat he could sever its wiring and

“ _Jack_.”

The storm fell away. Sweat rolled down the hunched expanse of his back, into half-seeing eyes until they stung. Only now did he realise that another hand lay on top of his, long and cool and gentle; beneath him, the sea of eyes coalesced into a grid of nine sea-blue blue dots.

At some point he had begun to shiver.

“Hush, Jack.” Zenyatta’s stroked across his knuckles, featherlight, while his synth fluttered and glitched about his name. “I am here.”

The shaking took a while to wear off. Even with his apology accepted- always too forgiving, he was too soft for his own good- the thought echoed over and over in his head, _I could have killed you_ . Zenyatta’s arms wrapped around his chest as if to keep the violent march of his heart contained, their closeness a protest in and of itself. _But you did not._

“You don’t deserve this,” he said, eventually. His voice was throaty with sleep and fear.

“And you do not deserve to suffer alone,” Zenyatta answered, with that serene certainty that often bordered, as it did now, on defiance. “No- don’t go. Please, stay with me a moment.”

Jack stilled. Occasionally he wondered what it was about the omnic that made him so easy to obey, even when the grizzled old vet in him rankled at the thought of some upstart monk giving him orders. Now, though, he was too tired for thought; on his side, he sank back against the delicate shell of Zenyatta’s frame, breathing shallowly. Seemed crazy now, to think that something so slight could really hurt him, but it was the height that had gotten to him. As if he’d been thrown down and cornered, as if he’d been looking up the barrel of a gun.

Then Zenyatta felt him wander before he’d even realised it himself, as he always did, and for a moment it made perfect sense.

“ _Stay_ , Jack,” Zenyatta murmured, a hand ghosting over his stomach until the muscles beneath clenched. “Call me selfish, but I want all of you here.”

Jack closed his eyes. Always felt a little redundant at first, especially in the dark, but it helped sometimes just to relieve his brain from the task of comprehending a world of half-shadows and shapes. Permission to stop, even if it scared the hell out of him.

Slowly but surely, the hand moved. Expectation did little to soften the shock of that cool metal palm cupping his chest, drawing languidly along pectoral muscle until thumb and forefinger closed around his nipple and squeezed a hitch from his throat.

Maybe it was some sort of cruel irony at work but the same adrenaline that kept him on on a knife’s edge left him razed and sensitive, hyper aware of even a whisper of contact. When Zenyatta spoke to him again, soft and low, the strange, subtle vibration of his synth struck him deeper than the encouragement to which it gave voice, straight into his spine at the nape of his neck. Nor did he need to see to understand the intimate path Zenyatta’s other hand wove on its way up to his shoulders. His fingertips traced every scar as if they mapped some great secret, and maybe they did, because as one finger pressed into the jagged star of a bullet wound Jack _jerked_ with the force of his gasp and his hips canting minutely at the sensation.

“Zen-”

Zenyatta’s touches shifted from his scars, still climbing in that slow, exploratory way of his, as if there were anything new left to find after so many nights of thorough investigation- but no, the novelty never seemed to wear off.

Experience had been one hell of a teacher to him already, that much was obvious. As one hand pinched and rolled, the other massaged its way into his neck, teasing the tension from stiff muscles until Jack’s head fell back against the omnic’s and the chrome, deliciously smooth against his stubble, misted over with the force of his breath- breath that seemed to come harder and faster with each caress. Hell, Zenyatta had barely done more than stroke and his cock was already, embarrassingly, filling out the front of his sweatpants, stuck to his thigh with sweat and, he realised, pre-come.

Involuntarily he moaned, the sound choked off only at the final moment by gritted teeth and a grunt, _don’t let ‘em know-_ but then Zenyatta _pulled_ on his nipple and the shock of pleasure and almost-pain released the sound in a deep, gurgling cry.

“Wonderful,” Zenyatta crooned, and the feathery lightness of his voice cut through the last of his defenses with breathtaking efficacy. “You are so _good_ to me, Jack.”

A thousand protests rose to Jack’s throat, and a thousand died in a gasp as those clever hands worked him to pieces, perhaps even in relief as Zenyatta released his grip and, finally, began to creep back down the damp stretch of stomach and hip, where the waist of his sweats seemed all of a sudden to chafe infuriatingly against his skin.

The peach-fuzz softness of arousal furred the inside of his skull, slowing the race of his thoughts to that comforting crawl with which he was steadily becoming reacquainted. How long had it been since he’d shared a bed with someone, before Zenyatta? How long since he’d been touched at all? _Too goddamn long_ , his body answered, dick sprung to attention as those long and blessedly cool fingers drew it free, and Jack could only buck up into that delicate channel with mindless need.

Ordinarily Zenyatta might have laughed in delight, teased him for such an uncharacteristic show of enthusiasm. But maybe he was feeling a little of that urgency, too. Scarcely half a second later the omnic was on him, and as he grasped his cock in earnest he made a soft, trembling sound that could have been a breath from any other lover.

The touch dealt a killer blow to them both. Deft, dainty flicks guided Zenyatta’s wrist- the same motions that guided his orbs into fatal volleys, Jack realised, and the thought sent a sick pang of want through his gut- as he worked his cock until the sticky slapping matched the rising thunder of his heart- until he could feel the pressure building, building, all the way in his back teeth and his stiffened shoulders and his curled toes, fighting like an animal against the end that raced towards him with terrible, seductive alacrity, the relief his body _ached_ for in ways he’d never, ever say out loud.

A growl ripped from his throat, Jack spilled over Zenyatta’s fingers- and everything was still. Hot, sweaty, his skin glued to the smooth body-hot surface of the omnic’s body, but still around the violent chaos that threatened to pound its way through his ribcage until that, too, began to wane. Little by little, his breaths deepened; his heart settled, a startled guard dog soothed back to sleep by a patient master.

Zenyatta was the first of them to move, releasing his cock with one hand and returning to his shoulders with the other to unwind his steel-wire muscles: _trapezius, deltoids, rhomboids_ , his brain mindlessly supplied the names. As the two of them lay on the floor together on a tangle of bedsheets and his body unfurled, it occurred to Jack, first of all, that his head was almost perfectly empty. Second: he was exhausted.

The omnic’s face pressed close to his neck as the first shadows of sleep began to swallow him up.

“This,” Zenyatta said softly, so softly Jack thought for a moment he had not spoken at all, “is your body.”

His voice was faded around the edges, like something from a dream. Jack didn’t believe in dreams, or spirit energy, or premonitions. But Zenyatta’s words glowed in that no man’s land between waking and sleep like fireflies in the dark.

”And because it is yours, I know there is nothing it can do to harm me.”

_Like something out of a movie_ , Jack thought ruefully. And then he was gone.


End file.
